Three Stages of Main Engine Control

Details
Written by johnhansen
Created: 06 January 2010
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The realization of ship's automation brings in countless advantages; for automation makes
it possible to free the crew from toiling and moiling, improve upon their working conditions,
minimize their number so as to raise the economic effects and safeguard the voyage
safety. It is obvious that the new
One of the examples of ship's automation is the three stages of main engine control, which
denote hand control, central control and bridge control respectively. The hand control
means controlling a main engine by the engine side, and may also be referred to as
emergency control if both the central control and the bridge control should go wrong.

The central control is to be realized from the centralized control room, whereas the bridge
control may be termed as remote control and executed in the wheelhouse. The mentioned
three stages of M.E. control can be switched over among one another, if necessary.

Together with the rapid development of the three-stage M. E. control, UMS/EO system has
already come into being, with UMS standing for the unattended machinery space and EO
for the engine room zero people.

Hereinbelow, we shall go into the details of the three-stage M. E. control one by one.

1. Hand Control

By the hand control, the function of the remote control maneuvering console is the same as
that of an ordinary electrictelegraph. Engineers in the engine space will operate the hand
wheel of a diesel engine according to the orders from the wheelhouse and perform the
answer to the electric telegraph signals at the same time.

2. Central Control

In order to conduct the central control, the measuring meters for various kinds of such
parameters of M. E. and aux. machinery as pressure, temperature, voltage, current,
frequency, rpm and so forth are to be arranged and fitted in the control room, which is
situated at the engine space and with the sound insulation and air conditioning equipment.

In addition, different signals, alarms and automatic control devices are centralized in the
control room as well. As a result of this, a mere operator is required to monitor and control
remotely all the engines and equipment in the engine space.

Needless to say, the advantage of the central control over the tiresome manual work is as
clear as noonday. Just imagine that there are normally over one hundred temperature
measuring points for the machinery set, and that you should measure them one after
another with an ordinary mercury thermometer!

It is apparent to all how much labour and sweat the central control can save those poor
engineers.

3. Remote Control

When the remote control is practised, the maneuver of a diesel engine is just the same as
that of the hand control; but for the remote control it is not necessary to have any engineer
operate the hand wheel of a diesel engine.
Instead, the hand wheel is to be turned by a servo motor after speed reduction by means of
gears, and the answer to the electrical telegraph signals to be performed at the same time.

This remote control system mainly consists of a synchro signal transmitter, a phase-
sensitive rectifier, a preamplifier, a push-pull magnetic amplifier and a servo motor.